Autumn Cottage Diarist

A Short Walk Through the Sea of Faith

The Anunciation Church of St Anthony, Lipscani, Bucharest

As a graduate of religious studies, founded on a lifelong fascination with comparative religions, I am always drawn with great interest to the religious practices and material culture of any place that I visit. This interest manifests itself in my compulsion, both here and abroad, to visit churches and cemeteries (my university studies were focussed on the rituals and rhetoric of death) - so it was with a great deal of delight that I approached my visit to Romania; I am particularly drawn to the theatricality of religious ritual - both in the actual practice of those rituals, and also the visual depictions of ritual and the religious texts upon which those rituals are founded. The Romanian Orthodox church has both in abundance; I was expecting this, getting excited over it and planning 'study visits' to several churches and cathedrals (one reason for my choice of hotel location - many old churches were within walking distance!)

What I did not quite expect, throughout the whole week, was to see so much 'faith in action'. A broad cross section of the population seemed to be actively practising their faith in a very matter of fact, en passant 'pop in and kiss an icon' way, integrated into their lives rather than set apart as a special event. Communism indeed laid its cold hand on this country in more ways than one, but it does not seem to have choked religious belief or  practice from at least a part of the body of the population.

Icon of the Theotokos, Church of St Paraskeva, Brasov

We were extremely fortunate to arrive in Bucharest the day before a major festival of the Orthodox Church. The Protection of the Theotokos (The Mother of God) commemorates and celebrates an apparition of Mary at a church in Blachernae (Constantinople) in the 10th century, at which, it is told, She removed her veil (the festival is also known as 'The Feast of the Protecting Veil') and placed it over the attending congregation. The festival celebrates the protection offered both by the Mother of God in her acts of intercession between Humanity and her Son, and the protection of the Christian Church.

Icons of this event often depict Mary with her cloak/veil held out with many people sheltering beneath it. (A convert to Orthodox Christianity, Sir John Tavener wrote one of his best known pieces 'The Protecting Veil' in honour of the belief).

Thus we ventured forth on Tuesday 1st October, intending a quiet wander around a few churches before a more active week got underway. Instead we were met, at every church we visited, by choral services attended by worshippers filling each interior, and in one church (The Annunciation church of St Anthony), streaming out of the doors, down steps and queuing in the surrounding passageways to light handfuls of votive candles in the twinkling shadows of the Pangaria (candle stations), to both the beloved living and the dead. Even many of those who were just passing by did not omit to vigorously cross themselves as they entered the environs of the church.

Candles - and prayers - for the Beloved Dead

Orthodox worship is a full-on experience. Even when no services are in progress, I am always drawn in to the vividly coloured events depicted in the frescoes and the glittering images on the icons (which are not in themselves intended to be worshipped, as is sometimes thought, but are seen as a 'channel' between the Human and the Divine - a 'focussing' mechanism  to aid the possibility of a moment of transcendence). Add to this background imagery the shimmer of candlelight on precious metals & stones, the smell of incense, the chant of the priest (and possibly choir) - it can be - and was - quite mesmerising.

The Interior of the church, following day

I rarely enter a place of worship when services are in progress - though it seemed acceptable to do so if one stood right at the back of the church (just inside the door, in the narthex) and behaved respectfully. On the 1st October, it was not possible so to do. Participants  were queuing to get in , and were pouring out in equal measure. The doors were blocked and it would have been impertinent to push through.

I did not need to - instead, I sat on a step and just looked…and listened.

Take just a minute to do so alongside me.

 

The Start of a Great Adventure!

Dear readers - I have returned from just a brief week in Romania, but a huge leap in my interest and appreciation of a country and its inhabitants - an interest which has only just been kindled, but will call me back again and again to dig deeper and discover more. How do I even begin to convey the flavour of the adventure? How can I express the joy of circle-dancing the night away at the gloriously happy wedding of my son and Romanian daughter in law - the central reason for my visit?

But also… how can I capture the colours and mystery of the ancient, frescoed Orthodox churches which I eagerly sought out? The glitter of the icons… the sea of faith with which I was surrounded in those places? How can I share the warmth of the people, their generosity, their welcome, their grasp of the English language (even just a few words in some more remote areas…but even that is a few words more than I shamefacedly admit is my grasp of their language!)

The medieval town of Brasov

How can I tell of the magnificence and mystery of the mountains and the forests of Transylvania - where fairytale leapt alive for me at night as I listened to the low, gutteral growls of European brown bears, rumbling from the deep, dark forest just a hundred or so yards away from the balcony on which I stood? How can I possibly tell you what it felt like to crawl up the narrow, claustrophobic, 45 degree stairway, to the tower in Bran Castle, ('Dracula's Castle' - once part of the kingdom of Vlad the Impaler) - to be rewarded with spectacular views across the valley?

The truth is - I cannot. They are places and events that have to be experienced in the flesh - my words and images are pale imitations of the reality. But for now - they are all that I have…so let me share with you, in the next few posts, just a glimpse into my beautiful, mysterious, sometimes heartbreaking, but every day astonishing visit - just the first of what I hope will be many more.

To begin at the very beginning...In all honesty, it was a struggle to even get there. I have had a severe flying phobia for many years now, after some very unpleasant previous experiences. I had contemplated travelling - as I did to Venice - by train, but it would have taken me at least three days - and I knew that I just did not have the stamina to do that - knowing that, when I arrived, there would be several days of city and country adventures even before the wedding.

So, putting, just for once, environmental considerations aside (I am not unaware) - I gritted my teeth and told Alec 'book the tickets NOW - before I change my mind!!!'

I won't go into detail of how much sleep I lost and how many times my stomach turned over in the two weeks beforehand - suffice it to say that I DID get on the plane, smiled in bliss when the pilot announced that - due to a following wind, the flight would be a whole HOUR shorter than expected - sat back, plugged in my iPlayer and (apart from consuming a delicious meal and lots of pampering by the BA attendants) allowed Melvyn Bragg and his guests to talk me through three 'In Our Time' Podcasts. Time literally and metaphorically flew - and we touched down in Bucharest to be greeted by a temperature of 31C. Just as well I had packed cotton shirts as well as woolly polo jumpers (I needed both by the end of the week )

Phew - that's better!!

Our taxi transfer got us to the heart of Bucharest, dropping us just a few hundred yards from our hotel in Lipscani - the 'Old Town' district of the city - one of the few areas of the city where President Ceaucescu did not let loose his bulldozers in the 1970's & 80's. The location of our little boutique hotel (the 'Rembrandt') was pedestrianised with cobbles - so even those few hundred yards were hard work at the end of a long day.

Our little 'boutique' hotel Rembrandt,  in the buzzing heart of the Old Town

But I was rewarded with my first glimpse of what was to fill my passion for the next week - one of the glorious Orthodox Churches with which Bucharest is still peppered. 'Ooh, my feet are aching' was actually an excuse to stop and take first photographs. Here are just a few images - a few 'first impressions' - there will be many more to follow!

The 'Monastery around the corner' - within a short walk of our hotel. Still inhabited by a small number of nuns.

The iconostasis (Icon gallery) inside the monastery church often beautifully carved

The monastery cloister with collected grave markers

Unusual, carved family headstone - part of a collection gathered here.

 

To Be A Pilgrim

I have been intrigued by the concept of Pilgrimage for many years; though it is normally thought of as a journey made by those with religious belief to a site of religious power, the concept can, I think, also be applied to anyone making a journey - physically, emotionally or intellectually, between one place (physical or metaphorical) and another, and being changed in some way by the process of that journey as much as by what is sought - or discovered - at the end.

There are thousands of pages out there exploring pilgrimage in great detail and with considerably more intellectual and practical knowledge than I have myself. I have never been on pilgrimage (which does not mean that I never will), but was reminded of my interest once again by watching a fine, 3-part series ('The Sacred Wonders of Britain') presented by Neil Oliver which has been on UK television recently and which may, in time, appear on YouTube or PBS. He visits sites which have been considered sacred in the UK, covering, in the course of the series, some 5000 years. The final episode visits some of the medieval sites here, which hold particular interest for me. So I thought I would share with you here three encounters with (in these particular cases, Christian) Pilgrimage that I have had, which have touched and changed my own life in some way.

 

The first is in the form of what is, to me, an immensely moving sculpture. It is of pilgrims en route to Santiago de Compostella, the great shrine to Saint James in Northern Spain, upon one of the pilgrim routes to which the little town of Pons in the Charente-Maritime department of France stands. The sculpture actually sits on a traffic island on the outskirts of the town and I first saw it when staying with a dear friend at her cottage a few miles away. We were visiting in temperatures of 38C - but the (almost life-sized) figures in the sculpture are wearing clothing of heaviest construction, wrapped as if to protect the wearers from bitter cold and lashing rain.

They seem almost alive and they bring to life, for me, one of what seems to me to be an important feature of physical pilgrimage - that of encounter with adversity, whether it be of the weather, or of the physical limitations of one's own body. This installation, embodying such immensely realistic depictions of real people on a real journey, brings me each time I see it into immediate contact with the vulnerable humanity of travellers from many centuries. It touches my heart in a very profound way and I love it very much indeed

 

My second encounter came with a visit made in 2013 to the Cathedral Church of St David in Pembrokeshire, West Wales;

Again, the physicality of the site is striking; the cathedral sits at the end of a wild and rocky route and anyone wishing to visit over past centuries would have had an arduous journey - even now, with the luxury of travelling by car, it was not always easy. But I did also experience the sight of the newly restored shrine of the Saint, complete with five beautiful modern icons.

Saint Non - the supposed mother of Saint David

Pilgrims were, at the time of my visit,  attending a service at the shrine and it was impossible not to be moved by the obvious intensity of their experience; though not believing in the same way as the Christian participants, that encounter with deep reverence had a great impact upon me. It also reinforced my feeling that - easy as it is, nowadays, to look  upon pictures and watch films about these places - it is not the same as standing in actual, physical proximity with other humans as they - we - experience something apart from every-day experience, in community - the essence of Victor Turner's Communitas.

But for all the failings of book, image and film - they are still a very worthwhile resource - and so to my third encounter with Pilgrimage; a short (20 minute) and I think little known film - 'Pilgrimage'  made in 2001 by maestro film maker Werner Herzog, who always seems to get further under the skin and closer to the heart (though it may be a dark heart) of an issue or phenomenon than almost any other director I can think of. The music is by another maestro, John Tavener. Together, the images and sound are transcendent - I hope you enjoy it; it certainly gave me pause for thought in my otherwise ordinary daily life.

Mornings With Mary - 1

Once again, a visit to Rebecca at Recuerda mi Corazon, where she hosts Mornings with Mary each Monday. Rebecca's blog is inspiring me greatly at present (two posts here in two days!!) - now I am taking the leap of participating more. This is one way of enjoying  sharing with others some of my own pleasure when I travel (and when I create imagery at home) in discovering the beauty of religious art. I do not practice any one particular faith but am drawn to  intense spirituality of both people and place - it fills that 'hole in my soul' that we all, I think, possess - but which is filled in different ways for different people.

The first images I would like to share are of  two of those of Nossa Senhora de Fátima - 'Our Lady of Fatima'  to be found in churches all over Lisbon in Portugal. This portrayal of Mary is a popular figure in Lisbon, seen in many different places, Fatima being a 'local' site of important pilgrimage, just over an hour from the capital.

Two churches - two portrayals of Mary - but how different they are in the emotions they conjure in me. The first, above, is found in the Basilica da Estrela on the outskirts of Lisbon. Like many Lisboan churches I did not find it to be welcoming - but rather dark and forbidding, and here, Mary is also distanced from those who come to look and venerate. She is separated from the viewer (and from the images of the two children who first saw her in visions) by plate glass; swathed in a lurid yellow light. My first sensation was that of being instructed to perceive this effigy of holiness from afar. Kept at much more than arms length, she had nothing to do with me, but was literally separated by a barrier that I was forbidden to cross. (My second observation was 'who on earth chose that horrible soda-light glow?!)

Compare her with the second image - from the Igreja de São Domingos in the centre of Lisbon. Again, a dark and rather depressing interior, but here, although the placement and iconography is more or less the same, no glass separates the compassionate visage from her onlookers - She is gentle, compassionate, warm and  accessible. I could touch her if I wanted. The glow comes not from a switch thrown by a sacristan - but from individual candles, lit by individual human beings as invocations for intercession or remembrance in times of gratitude or difficulty.  For me, the link between human and Divine is made so much more clearly here - unsurprisingly, I like this portrayal a great deal more.

 

On the Disruptive Nature of an Artist's Date

The Death of the Virgin - altarpiece segment from the Northern Rhine, 1430-50. Painted and Gilded Walnut.

Anyone who has read Julia Cameron's 'Artists Way' will know that one of the activities which she suggests is that of taking oneself off at regular intervals for 'Artist Dates' - time spent alone at some particular venue which will stimulate your creative juices, so that one's 'well of creativity' can be periodically refilled in order that it can then be dipped into anew.

I had the opportunity to do this two days ago, when I was invited to travel to London to the Victoria and Albert Museum - a temple to creativity - to which my close friend J had been given gift membership last Christmas. As a result, we were both allowed to use the Members Lounge - a quiet room in the upper reaches of the building, accessed via the Glass Galleries...

Exceedingly covetable miniature (not quite 1/12 scale) Bohemian 19th century glass in the Glass Galleries

...and also gain free entry to one of the two major exhibitions open there at the moment -  The Treasures of the Royal Courts, celebrating 500 years of diplomatic and trade relations between Britain and 'Muscovy'

You can read more about the exhibition on the V&A's own website - so this post is not really to tell you about that in detail - but more to notice the disruptive, as well as the 'well filling' effect that such a visit can have. As you all know, if you read this blog at all frequently, I am spending a great deal of time at the moment in the garden, which is gradually taking shape again from a fairly neglected patch of greenery. I love almost every minute I spend there, getting my hands dirty, the rest of me often dirty and wet, making my back and feet ache - but standing back periodically, deeply enjoying the natural world and saying 'yes, at last this is becoming a garden'.

The Troyes Altarpiece, French, 1504 - incredibly finely detailed portraits carved not in wood, but in (painted) limestone

But now - after my Artist Date at the museum on Tuesday (large parts of which I did spend on my own, as my friend and I split up most of the time to visit our own favourite galleries), after immersing myself in the balm of a different kind of beauty, and knowledge, and discourse, why - I am totally disrupted!! I am hankering once again to pick up my books and tickle my brain cells in a different kind of way - be creative in a different kind of way to how I create when I am gardening, and also pursue study of some of the collections in both a broader and a deeper manner. What was the historical background of these items? The particular story of the church in which that carving was placed? What do the symbols and postures of the figures denote? How did the cult of devotion to the Virgin Mary in medieval times encourage certain styles and patronages? There is a beauty, too, in discovering all these details, and more in seeing how these works of art do not come to exist in isolation, but for a reason and within a context. As explanations make sense and pieces fall into place, I think there is much beauty in gaining greater and wider understanding,  But I need to juggle my days around to enable me to fit in both kinds of beauty; I *need* both kinds - otherwise, one life time will definitely not be enough to enable me to appreciate all that is waiting out there for me!

One factor which makes the V&A museum so impressive is its stated philosophy of being a place to stimulate the creativity of all those who visit as well as a place to admire the creations of the past. They have an exceptional outreach programme of classes, courses, lectures, symposia and visits with related online 'subject hubs' - of which their Creative Writing hub immediately caught my notice. It is worth taking a look if you are at all interested in any form of personal writing - six segments with writing exercises in each, using items from the museum collections to stimulate thought and imagination. Not everyone can travel to London, but anyone can browse the V&A collections, so why not do so yourself - and in so doing, give yourself your own little Artist Date with the museum.

And as a final thought - if you could visit, explore and/or study an area, subject or topic in greater detail - what would it be?

Gold, Frankinsense, Myrrh - and Questions

'Adoration of the Magi' Gentile da Fabriano (d 1428)

From the detached sumptuousness of  Fabriano's Magi to the humane, engaged intellectual visages of Brueghel the Elder's Kings, images of the Christian Epiphany always intrigue me.

  'Adoration of the Three Kings', Pieter Breugel the Elder, 1564)

The Magi always seem to have been a bit of an afterthought here in the UK and I wonder if this is because their festival comes at the end of the Twelve Days of Christmas, when the Protestant work ethic was already kicking in hard during the last four centuries. And also...what to make of them? Were they actual Kings? I suspect the reality is more that they were more likely (possibly Zoroastrian) 'Wise Men' - astronomers, investigators, explorers, seekers after truth(s), questioners, asking 'who is this?' and 'what does this mean'? - Always a recipe for suspicion and a possible run-in with authority. Though they do certainly look pretty on Christmas cards, these guys have been under suspicion in certain quarters for a very long time.

It seems to me that many of the same questions asked 2000 years ago are asked today - with the same variety of answers, different ones appropriate for different individuals. Perhaps it is the questioning, the hard journey, the uneasy answers that are the important things..prompting us to continually make that journey, think hard, dig deep, not turn away from being confronted with other questions as a result of our own exploring?

T.S.Eliot's  'Journey of the Magi' - (who I envisage more closely resembling  those of Breughel than Fabriano) expresses to me quite strikingly this concept of hard journeying and continuing questioning, ...but also the never-ending need that we human beings have to do so - to question and seek for Truths that will shine in the darkness and make sense of the complications of the world for us, while at the same time revealing that some things may never be explained. What thoughts and questions does it bring up for you?


"A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter."
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
hat this was folly.

 
Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation,
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky.
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.
All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all the way for
Birth or Death ? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

You may care to explore this poem more deeply by listening to the episode dedicated to it in the excellent, 30 minute BBC 'Adventures in Poetry'

And since hard journeying and constant questioning is not comfortable, but constantly prompts new questions from any answers we may think we have found, here is an image that certainly jolts me out of my own illusions of prettiness and complacency.

  Gottfried Helnwein
Epiphany I (Adoration of the Magi) 1996 (Image from http://www.helnwein.com)

What questions does this modern image leave with you? ( This essay may illuminate your thinking and questioning...) What thoughts, what feelings, what indignations or protests? What truths and actions and further journeying does it present to you?

It seems to me that the journey is never easy...but what makes it worthwhile are the questions - and the continuing desire to seek for answers to some of therm.

May you all experience your own Epiphanies in 2011...and may you be energised by the adventure of your own journeys required to do so.

Lenten Talks from the BBC

A thought provoking Lenten Talk - first of a series from the BBC - this one by Will Self, a speaker whom I usually find a tad too sardonic...but this is interesting. He speaks - inter alias - about The mind, the desert, the desert of the mind, The Great War, churches, theistic and secular societies, Damian Hirst, the Credit Crunch, diamonds, ritual, beauty and ugliness. Not bad for 15 minutes!

If you can find the time to listen to this (I think you might find it worthwhile to do so) - do you have any  thoughts of your own on his opinions?

Addendum: my good friend over at the Bay Side (who has a blog post today which is also WELL worth reading) has just sent me this link to a printed version of the Will Self talk...for those of you who prefer to read rather than to listen - and for future ref (the BBC link only stays live for about a week). Thanks, D!

Peeling Back the Layers

Watched another fascinating programme last night on the UK Channel 4
"On demand" player on the net, this time about "The Secrets of the 12
Apostles", in which Dr Robert Beckford travelled all over Europe and to India
in search of more information about how, exactly, the early Christian
church was first propagated.

What has caught my interest for the last 15 months, (since I have been a student in the Department of Theology & Religious Studies at Winchester, and touched by the learning of such feminist liberation theologians as Lisa Isherwood and Liz Stuart) caught my interest in this programme - the place of women in the early church, their influence in the propagation of the story of the new
religion of Christianity, and their marginalisation by the patriarchal power
structures that gained ascendency in the Church - until now!
One new organisation which intrigues me is the Phoebe Institute,
named after the deaconess Phoebe, known to the Apostle Paul. The
founder, Rev Evelyn Wiseman, reminds me a lot of some of my Tutors, and
I reckon that a week on one of the Phoebe courses would be a most
fascinating time.

I don't feel that I am any more - or less - "religious" than I was before I
started the course at Winchester - but what I do feel is that I am a great
deal better informed - and a good deal more aware of just how much has
been hidden, or fallen by the wayside, of what started out as a very
different story of Christianity. In my nosey-parker way, I want to know
MORE - and satisfyingly, the more is out there and available for just a
small amount of seeking.

Another facet of this story, which entices me more than most is the art
history aspects of religion, which has been addressed - with respect to
Christianity - in another three part series  "Art of Eternity"
made by Andrew Graham-Dixon, which covers Christian art up to about the 14th century, and has been repeated on TV here over the last few weeks.
I have been attracted to Byzantine art ever since watching John Romer's
"Byzantium" a few years ago, and then, of course, visiting Venice and
being entranced by the mosaics in the Basilica of St Mark  and on Murano
and Torcello. Graham- Dixon's series supplements and extends the story,
and now I am just itching to visit Sienna, Ravenna and Assisi.

So much to learn - so little time!

Mosaics in the Basilica of San Marco, Venice